Making homes and offices sustainable has a direct impact on the way we live and how we use natural resources
Winston Churchill once said: “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”
The buildings we live and work in have an impact on us and we need to develop and manage them in tune with more responsible use of the world’s natural resources.
According to OECD figures, the built environment is responsible for about 25-40% of total energy use, 30% of raw material use, 30-40% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 30-40% of solid waste generation. These statistics provide an uncomfortable yet compelling truth: buildings and their construction are among the largest contributors to global resource use. There is no way of avoiding the fact that the disproportionately high resource consumption of our buildings is largely a legacy of the past.
Until the recent growth in environmental awareness, aesthetics and short-term market considerations have often taken precedence over more environmentally and socially responsible business practices. At the same time, our personal expectations have also changed. Home comforts, no longer confined to home, now also apply to offices, retail outlets and holiday accommodation.
So, what is a ‘sustainable’ building? And how do you measure its impact?
Simple questions, but the truth is we all struggle to define exactly what sustainability means to us. Sustainable, green, zero carbon, nearly zero energy, healthy, high performance, and the list goes on. There is no shortage of terms and technology promising to deliver the latest sector targets or political aspirations, yet defining what exactly we are aiming to achieve seems extremely challenging.
Measuring sustainability is a similarly complex issue. In response to the ever-growing array of sustainability building metrics and related certification tool acronyms, a recent UN Environmental Programme report cleverly coined the term ‘alphabet soup’. Devising a universally accepted method of measuring the impact of sustainability is no easy task.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
Ursula Hartenberger is global head of sustainability at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)